Genesis is a world of dark fantasy, within a constant state of battle between good, evil and those who cannot decide. The world is being consumed by the Void, another world released into the creation by an event called Worldbreak. Here's a brief story of some races which explains the state of the world.

Dalesmen: Once there was Great Empire which spanned the whole world and was immensely strong. However with strength and size comes a corruption, and with a corruption come evil plotters. Their leaders at the time desired the ability to bypass death in order to live forever thus avoiding the eternal slumber. It was this darkness in their hearts which lead them to poison their own King and thus begin a war that would create the Undead Legion. Now the city-states of Dalesmen, a splinter of the former glory, must continue to rebuild while finding a way to fight the evil they allowed into the world.

Undead Knight-lords (Fallen): When the Great King was poisoned by Void elixir he died. But his soul came into the Void empowered by the magic of the elixir, so it found its way back and brought other souls with it. They entered their former bodies and woke up from the slumber of death. Now fallen are a large group of undead that travel the land claiming all that they come across. Those that fall in battle to their blades will rise again to fight against their former comrades. These Knights are still lead by the fallen heroes of the ancient Dalesmen. Their lust for power has driven them through the ages as they search for a means to share their "immortality" with everyone.

Void dwellers: When the Great Empire realised that their king is an undead lord and what they have done, they tried to make a pact with void speakers, a lonely group of cultists who were leading a reclusive life in the Cavern of Woe. The knights captured their high priests and ordered them to conduct a divination to banish the undeath from the creation. The high priest Merrilith tried to explain that the dark magic which keeps the Undead King alive is being channeled from another place where the souls of dead people go and it cannot be simply severed from the creation. In rage the knight lord has beheaded Merilith and declared that if the cultists do not break the tie and do as they are ordered to, they will be all slaughtered. In grim silence the void speakers have conducted a ritual which sealed the channel between the void and the creation, taking the power from the Undead King and killing him in an instant. However the dimensional strain started to build up and grow, and after a few years the ties hastily strapped on the pattern of the creation became loose and the void has spilled into the creation, causing the Worldbreak and tainting major regions of the world which became evil and forbidden for living. Strange creatures began to dwell there, and a cruel race of Void dwellers has crept into our world.

Dwarves: Dwarves are an ancient race, born by the mountains itself. All dwarves used to live in a huge mountainhome and were a mythical race to most living. They were hardy workers and defenders and there were thousands of them, living in harmony and digging the stone like ants in a huge ant mound. They almost never left their mountain and avoided contacts with any outside races.When the Worldbreak happened, dwarven elders decided to seal off their Mountainhome from the outside world completely and move into depths, closer to the warmth of the mother earth. That was the doom of the grand settlement. Hardy miners discovered shining rocks which they could barely chip with their pickaxes. Upon further examination it appeared to be an ore of extremely strong and light metal, and the greed was born. Here and there dwarves were digging around like mad, trying to find more of the precious ore they called adamantine. However one day the pick hit an adamantine vein and it sounded like the vein was hollow... After the fall of the grand mountainhome small groups of dwarven migrants fled into the outside world, terrified and lost. They formed new kingdoms which were nowhere close to the cradle of the civilization. The name of the place was itself forbidden and forgotten, and new fortresses were named by combining random names to avoid any possibility of the recreation of the cursed name. Now it's in the hands of dwarves to rebuild that which was lost and find a new future.

Races

Neutral- Dalesmen: castle builders and townsfolk, a good source of income and protection. Trigger: 20 dwarves.- Dherim: desert-dwelling slavers, they will bring you curious goods and all possible animals from their menagerie. Trigger: 100000 exported wealth.- Dwarves: your own brothers and sisters, they will send you migrants and trade with you. Trigger: none.- Nords: strong northern humans, they will trade you during harsh seasons and they love ale as much as dwarves do. Trigger: 20 dwarves.- Sylvans: children of the forest, they will dislike you for cutting trees and trade a lot of cloth. Trigger: 50000 created wealth, 20 dwarves.

Hostile- Merfolk: stupid aggressive amphibians who can only craft leather armor. They will raid you often.- Serpentfolk: evil snakemen with a deadly bite. They inhabit savage wetland and will be quite pleased to kill your dwarves.- Bandits: outlaws, brigands and other filth who will try to become rich by plundering your stashes. Trigger: 25000 exported wealth. Siege: 200000 exported wealth.- Goblins: vile barbarians and brigands, they will attack you in big numbers to loot and plunder. Trigger: 50000 created wealth, 20 dwarves. Siege: 80 dwarves.- Fallen: undead creatures which want your lifeforce. Revenants, shamblers, liches and fallen footpads will siege you to gnaw on your bones. Trigger: 50000 created wealth, 20 dwarves. Siege: 1000000 created wealth, 80 dwarves.- Kensari: a race of nature-lowing hostile centaur raiders. They use good bows and they are large and strong. Trigger: 5000 exported wealth, 50 dwarves. Siege: 25000 exported wealth, 80 dwarves.- Ratkin: a cowardly race of rat-like beastmen who will try to steal your wealth. Trigger: 20 dwarves. Siege: 80 dwarves.- Void dwellers: a race from the other world, coming into the creation to turn it into their playground. They are resistant to weapons but weak to moonsilver. There are 5 castes: banshee, mindflayer, shadowlord, slender, voidmaster, wight. Trigger: 1000000 created wealth, 80 dwarves. Siege: 3000000 created wealth, 110 dwarves.

Entities have different weapons and armor. For example, dwarves get full helms and dwarven platemail, which gives them the best armor amongst other races.All civilizations build tombs.

Adventure mode building/mining/crafting

- Warmist's AdvFort plugin is included and customized, and custom adventurer reactions are tweaked to fit it. Check the manual to read how to do all the new stuff.

Now in adventurer mode you can make everything you could make in Fortress mode. Press Ctrl-X to select jobs. But read the manual, seriously, there's not a lot, just interface explanation you will need.

War gear

- Different races have access to different weaponry and armor.- There're different types of swords, axes, hammers etc. which range in size, shape and utility value.- Different armor preferences make races different. Barbarians prefer to wear light leathers and cover only some parts of the body with armor, nords wear some armor but replace some of it with warm clothes, dalesmen prefer full heavy plate suits and undead wear what they kept on their bodies in disorder.- There's always a chance to score a critical chance through armor. Every armor has a chance to be passed by an attack (simulating a hit in a joint/under edge etc) which is really slow, but gives you a chance to kill even an armored opponent like a dalesmen knight. Better gear has better coverage, with full helms and dwarven plates being the best against it.- You can use a coating vat to coat spears, bolts and arrows in plant poisons and animal venoms. It can drastically change the outcomes of your fights.

Automatons

- Make iron and bronze centurions, let them rip enemies apart!- Make clockwork spiders, they will clean your dwarves and hunt vermin!- Make clockwork cannons. If you ever wanted flamethrowers on your walls, you can get them now.- Turn wounded dwarves (or vampires) into Remade, part-dwarves, part-automatons.- Alternatively move dwarven souls into a bronze frame, turning them into clockworks, fully functioning mechanical dwarves!

Fauna

- Creature rebalance: removal of overly specific creatures, unique animals with specific roles and abilities.- RPG-style animalmen: hunters, foragers, shamans etc. of different unique animalmen (like owlbears, lurkers, anubites) will make encounters diverse and more tactical.- Creatures have tiles named after their type (in ASCII), not first letter of their name. Check the manual for a complete list.- Removal of giant animals and animal-men to leave room for fantasy creatures.- Unique caverns: caves with slimes, underground jungle with amphibians and bees, abyss growing from deep caverns- Fairy dragons and living plants in good regions.- Vermin rebalance: less specific vermin, more vermin to fish (fish, toads, frogs, turtles), some vermin bite (mosquito, leech) etc.

- Five unique secret types: nature secrets, secrets of death, secrets of disease and blight, eldritch secrets, secrets of storms and lightning and pyromancy.- Secrets are granted by gods and dragons.- Unique spells for druids, necromages, blight prophets, wizards, stormbringers and pyromancers granted by those secrets.

Religion

- Earth, Air, Water, Fire and Aether temples.- Spend earth/fire/air/water/aether crystals to summon powerful creatures, golems and demons to fight for you.- Make it rain! Make it snow!- Grow all saplings on map, get nature blessings and turn dwarves into druids!- Alternatively turn dwarves into cultists, undead won't be bothering those. Create a death god fortress!- Craft powerful magical equipment. Caps of invisibility, belts of strength, wands of fireballs and many more items await you.

Flavor

- Many different new lines have been added to speech files, you will notice it as soon as you start an adventurer and start talking/killing people.- New engraving and decoration types have been added.

Geology

- Complex geology: dozens of new mineral and rock types to make the mining more interesting.- Compact peat as fuel and goethite (bog iron) as an iron source in swamps.- Anthracite as the best mineral coal avaliable. Lignite gives 5, bituminous coal 8 and anthracite 10 coke.- Meteorites which net meteoric iron.

Workshops

There is a big amount of new workshops added to the mod. Check the manual for almost complete list, it should be always up to date.

i love the name dalesmen, it is a lot better then keeperwith the different types of wood will they keep the name of the tree? i.e if I cut down oak will i get "oak fair logs" or just "fair logs"and will you have something smiler to the leather system which was one of my favorite parts of genesis

He, you are really doing this. Start Genesis from scratch. Wow. Hope you can avoid all old mistakes and do the mod you wanted in the first place.

I really like how you use the trick with natural skills to make custom sprites for you races and actually mix creatures in them. I always thought that this would only work for unarmed creatures. But it seems that a high natural skill ensures that a creature gets the fitting weapon assigned if the entity has access to it. Or would you still get an troll with high natural skill in one combat skill, but then gets assigned a crossbow, and appears as a goblin sprite ingame ?

The game randomizes skills on creatures and then gives them weapons. If a creature already had a skill, it appears with an appropriate weapon. It won't give an unappropriate weapon, and I don't think it will give another weapon skill if the creature already has one.

I am not 100% sure what happens with weapon masters who are leaders of squads though, I should test it. But I think creatures level their main skill in world gen, and since they already start with main skills, it should not deviate.

It's almost 4 AM here, so I haven't added info about aboveground crops to the manual file. But I've added the info about subterranean, so you should not be in danger . Also you can check the old genesis site for the info on aboveground plants.

Do you intend to simplify materials with this mod? I've always preferred Genesis to Masterwork just because I really enjoy having the various named types of leather, wood, meat, etc (that and it's a great mod all around). An <insert cuddly animal here> bone chair is much more fun than a generic 'bone chair', imo.